Shary Boyle: Flesh and Blood

Ingenuity, virtuosity and refinement define the fabulous world of multi-disciplinary artist Shary Boyle. With extraordinary versatility, the Toronto artist engages in drawing, painting, sculpture, audio-visual performance and installations to explore human psychological and emotional states through a fictional fantasy. At once feminist, dream-like and poetic, but always charged with disturbing emotion and expressive candor, her works generate daring and original perspectives on the present. This first major monograph features new works from all aspects of Boyle's practice with particular emphasis on her distinctive porcelain sculptures. Evoking the double marginalization of feminine culture and craft traditions, these exquisitely crafted works - deliberately reminiscent of fine China figurines - are emblematic of Boyle's practice. It is precisely this historically misogynistic treatment of the medium that she exploits in her work as a vehicle to examine the constantly collapsing boundaries between the carnal and the carnage of history.